Qantas launches inspection blitz after cracks found on Boeing 737 jet | Hacker News Reader

Qantas launches inspection blitz after cracks found on Boeing 737 jet

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Is this “and also at Quantas” because this story is over a month old: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7515909/Unusual-cra...

It's 'Qantas'... "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services"

Shouldn’t it be QANTAS

I believe the widely accepted (but not universal) format for acronyms is all caps if each letter pronounced...for example MIT. Only the first letter is capitalized if hte acronym is pronounced as a word...for example Nasa.

Historically, MIT is not an acronym since it’s not pronounced as a word. MIT is just an abbreviation (specifically an initialism), while NASA is an acronym.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acronym

I don’t think there’s any rules about capitalization and acronyms, as scuba and laser are acronyms, and not capitalized, but NASA is. I’ve also never seen Nasa, it’s always all capitals NASA.

Look at this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/collegeofjournalism/entries/8f7c...

That's just how the BBC writes acronyms, Nasa themselves write their name all-caps.

Regardless of its actual origins as an acronym, it’s a company name so the correct answer can be whatever the company chooses it to be.

"Qantas. Qantas never crashed."

From Rain Man - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/quotes/qt0192567

"Detailed analysis by Boeing shows that even where this crack is present, it does not immediately compromise the safety of the aircraft – as indicated by the time-frame given by regulators to perform the checks."

Oh, well that seems absolutely fine then...

Stress-related cracks eventually form in all aluminum aircraft, particularly at the wing root, so it’s a well-studied aspect of aircraft safety.

Engineers have a very good idea of what’s dangerous and what is not.

I think the concern here is that engineers understanding might eventually be overruled by managements need to decrease costs, roll out faster, etc...

In that case i guess it’s lucky that Qantas management jumped on it so quickly and didn’t worry about decreasing costs

Tier 1 airlines are strongly motivated to prevent catastrophic loss of aircraft.

Killing passengers is generally considered to be bad for business.

Well, it is. Maybe. Or not.

Part of engineering is to form a reasonable understanding of how quickly cracks grow, and then document that as "check for cracks every x/2 days", where x is the number of days necessary for a crack to grow to a dangerous size and 2 is a number I invented ten seconds ago.

It has been said that Boeing has been a little sloppy about that second bit recently, though, so perhaps Quantas is distrustful and has reason. Here for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bdfqm4/the_real_rea... and I quote: "James had constantly raised red flags about safety corners Boeing was cutting on the 787 rollout. Things like putting the plane out before there was a good understanding of crack propagation speed, nondestructive testing protocols and repair protocols for all the carbon fiber on the plane. These were extremely serious issues that Boeing swept under the rug to get the 787 out faster. Because he wouldn't toe the line on this, James got exiled to the shitty little backwater …"

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